


Green and Sharp

by Sage (sageness)



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, Gen, Monsters, Yuletide, Yuletide 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 15:27:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/pseuds/Sage
Summary: It's green and slimy and definitely Falcon-related.





	Green and Sharp

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Casylum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casylum/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!

The first shout was a call to Dering Wood, Internet-famous as "The Most Haunted Forest in Britain", and otherwise massive pain in the local plods' collective ass. They hadn't actually been at the murder-meadow, though, according to Matthew Barnes, a pale, round-faced twenty-year-old who'd landed himself in A&E after fleeing the woods with four of his friends and causing an RTA on the nearest motorway. The responding officers took note of the young IC1s yammering on about monsters in the pond went into Holmes, and thus were me and Guleed actioned to drive down and take statements. 

"So, what were you lot doing out there?" I asked.

Matthew allowed that they might have been hiking through to the murder-meadow in order to create a ghost encounter for their YouTube channel, but, well, the murder-meadow is only a clearing in the woods, innit? "The pond has better ambiance."

"Creepy as shit, he means," said Gabby. "And that's before the thing came out of the water."

The thing that came out of the water hadn't been caught on camera because Danielle had been filming the mist hovering amongst the trees. They'd only had the light of their mobiles, and according to Gabby and Nate, had spent most of the time bickering about getting on to the site of the ancient village where the massacre had been, rather than fucking around with ankle-breaking marsh and mud, but Matthew would have his way, wouldn't he. 

"The eyes, though," said Sophie, the one who'd been looking. "Giant white eyes and sharp teeth and claws. It went right for Dani."

"Nate chucked a fallen branch at it and we ran," Danielle said.

"Did it say anything?" Guleed asked, and all five of them stared back at us with blank faces. 

"Nah," Sophie said finally. "It just wanted to eat her."

The hike down to the pond was exactly as muddy and ankle-risking as you'd expect. The kids had left deep gouges in the slope in their flight, so at least it was easy to tell the way down to the water. "Are we really expecting anything here?" Guleed asked me. "And if there are monsters in the water, what are we meant to do about it?"

I shrugged. "Not a clue." I did perform an initial vestigia assessment at the water's edge. There definitely had been something large and carnivorous about. The mud under my feet had a distinct sense of tadpoles, which I remembered from grammar school science class, and needle-sharp teeth, which I did not. I also had a weird impression of a bowl of green gelatin glistening against a fingertip, resisting the pressure and then parting messily. 

Guleed took some pictures of the area with her mobile: the churned up bank, the undisturbed algae slime further along the arc of the pond, some ancient grey boulders blanketed in thick moss. I caught her eye and nodded toward the moss. "No tracks up there."

"Pretty though." She gestured toward the postcard-perfect green water. "Doesn't seem like there's anything Falcon lurking down there."

I shook my head. "Not anymore."

*

Four weeks later, PC Samitra Lankesh led Guleed down the path along the paved shoreline walking path around Connaught Water in Epping Forest. The Water is a narrow lake used mainly by dog-walkers, young parents pushing prams, and that certain class of well-to-do aged white folks determined to meet their NHS cardio fitness guidelines, or else. It was one of the last who had brought on the 999 call. According to Lankesh, a mother out for an early jog with her toddler came across one Mabel Geoffries, age 72, collapsed on the path with her loyal medium sized terrier barking up a storm at her side. There was green slime all over them both and what looked suspiciously like green blood on the dog's jowls. Geoffries herself had suffered a heart attack due to shock and thus hadn't yet been statemented.

I had better luck with the vestigia assessment this time, as the path that encircled the water was a properly paved walking track. Again, something Falcon had definitely been in the water, and had come out of it, and—again—wasn't in the water any longer.

"This doesn't seem like something we can arrest, does it?" said Guleed as we drove back to the Folly. I agreed that it didn't seem likely.

The next day, we knew slightly more. Guleed had spoken briefly with Mabel Geoffries in her hospital bed. When I expressed my surprise that she'd been let in, she told me she had simply promised the doctors that she would be gentle and concise, unlike certain other DCIs of her acquaintance. Mabel Geoffries mostly remembered the shock of it, Guleed reported at the evening briefing over Molly's pot roast. "Something green and spindly, coming at her from behind," until Pike, her loyal canine companion, whipped his lead out of her hand and flew at it. Then she was on the ground struggling for air and losing consciousness.

Dr Walid and Dr Vaughn had been working nonstop on identifying the green blood. Pike, a mid-sized grey Fox Terrier mix, had been placed under observation in case of poisoning, but he seemed fine so far. 

"We need to know if this is sentient," Nightingale said, "or if it's only the equivalent of a magical animal attack. Peter, as these creatures—or beings—are water-dwelling, perhaps we should invite Beverley into the conversation."

Bev was slightly off the grid at the moment, doing an all Southern England summer tour of riverine allies and relations at the behest of her mum. I left her an admittedly soppy voicemail, because we do that now, and hoped she would end up somewhere with enough bars to check her phone. That left the magical library and a call to Professor Postmartin to see if any of the green pond-haunting monsters of British folklore were anything like _real_.

"Jenny Greenteeth, Grindylows, that sort of thing?" he asked. 

That was the sort of thing, I agreed. "Setting aside your Pratchett and Rowling." Postmartin rang off with a chuckle, saying he would dig into the historical literature. 

Beverley called me back a couple of days later, the sound of lapping water and diesel engines churning in the background. "Why are you messing about with Jenny Greenteeth?" she asked, so I had to start from the beginning and explain about the kids in the wood and the woman at the park.

"Well, of course they're real," said Bev. "They're not really from our world, though."

"Does that mean they're Fae?" I asked. "Or are we talking magical wildlife? I just need to know what it is we're dealing with. If it's a malicious bastard preying on dog-walking grannies or what."

Bev sighed. "It's complicated, all right? There's things that come through sometimes, but they generally don't stay and they don't tend to bother humans."

"Like the Faerie Queen that took Hannah and Nicole. Are Jenny Greenteeth sentient?"

"Have I ever sat down to tea with one to find out? No, no I haven't. There's things, Peter. Loads of things I've only vaguely heard of and never had to deal with. They stay out of the estuary, I mostly never hear about them unless I go visiting like I am now and other rivers happen to tell stories."

"Could you—"

"Yes, I can ask about, as long as I'm here."

Things devolved from there into me telling her how much I missed her and her promising to be back in town for the weekend, if only because she needed to deliver some gifts to her mum. That turned out to be fortunate, as the director of Kew Gardens phoned the Folly at half six Saturday morning with an emergency he'd been advised to take straight to Nightingale. 

"There's something in the Waterlily Pond," Nightingale told me when he'd rousted me from bed. 

"Am I allowed into Kew yet, or am I still banned?" I asked before I called Bev.

"Today we'll get you in. Perhaps, with luck, you can redeem yourself in their eyes." 

I didn't hold out much hope of that, but at least Beverley was at her mum's, downstream in Wapping. We went blues and twos, Bev swam, and we arrived at the same time. 

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew comprise a number of enormous glass houses set in a large park of various themed ornamental gardens. The Waterlily Pond holds different species of—wait for it—lilies, and sits like the stage at the base of a small amphitheater, complete with park benches looking down from above. It is, importantly, not the same thing as the Waterlily House, a heated tropical glasshouse full of, you guessed it, lily ponds.

In places like Kew Gardens, the groundskeepers work from the crack of dawn to pick up after the teeming masses, so it was at six in the morning that one of them noticed something weird about the Waterlily Pond, sent it up the food chain to his boss' boss, and someone called Nightingale. Now it was a quarter past seven, and the day's first wedding was scheduled for ten, while other parts of the Gardens would be opening shortly. The staff, needless to say, were a bit anxious for us to get on with it.

"It would be best for you all to remain up here," Nightingale assured the manager who met us at the gate. "I believe we know the way down."

Thus, Wizard, Apprentice, and local river goddess descended briskly upon a tiny, picturesque body of water scant metres from the Thames. There was definitely something in it: I could feel the whispering tension in the air before we got anywhere near it. Next to me, Nightingale was preparing some advanced level spell, I had no idea what, when Bev jogged forward.

"Oi," she snapped. "Out you get." Bev waved a hand and what I can only describe as a pressure dome went up over the pond. The water rippled out from the centre. Lily pads bounced. Fronds bent under an invisible weight. Then the thing crawled out of the water.

It was vaguely female-shaped, green, with enormous white eyes and needle-sharp teeth and claws. I still don't know if the slime was attached or just pond scum. 

"Jenny Greenteeth?" Bev asked.

"Aye," it said in a deep, resentful voice. "So they call us."

"We're with the police," Nightingale said. "I'm afraid we have some questions."

*

"They're in my territory!" the Jenny Greenteeth hissed at Bev. "Everywhere I come through, another's in this pond, that marsh, the lake over the valley. Any low place with a bit of standing water in."

"Every one?" Bev said skeptically. "Every single one?"

The Jenny Greenteeth deflated. "Nae, not every one, but more than e'er before. There's spats. Squabbles, the kind what leave scars. And there's too many human folk on the waters now, aren't there?" 

"We can't have you and your kind endangering the public," I said.

"Is there something wrong with your world for you to leave it?" asked Nightingale.

It only squinted angrily into the morning light. Nightingale and I both tried again, rephrasing, again and again, but it only remained silent and ever more surly.

"Why come where there are so many humans?" Bev asked. "How do you think that's going to end for you? Your kind aren't the sort of Fae who play well with others. You can't even pass at a Goblin Market."

"We'll go as where we like," it told Bev. A sort of murmuring shudder passed through the lily fronds encircling the pond, and its fists clenched in frustration.

"Nah, think again, Greenie." Bev flicked a hand and the Jenny Greenteeth rose in the air in a ball of water. "You're leaving the city. You're telling all of your kind to do the same. We may not be able to stop you coming through from your world into ours, but in ours, you're staying well out in the countryside, and you're not bringing this bloody territoriality into it."

"You can't stop us," it hissed.

"Oh?" Bev spun it in the air like a globe. "I think you'll find we can." 

The ball of water vanished and the Jenny Greenteeth dropped like a stone into the pond, except there was no splash. It had gone through and was gone.

*

"That was interesting," Beverley said after we'd retired to the Coach House for breakfast . Molly brought up breakfast with an unhappy glance toward Nightingale, I guessed over the Folly's failure to provide adequate hospitality to its most frequent visiting genius loci.

I asked, "Did it mean to sound like they're invading?"

"I think that might be overstating the case," Nightingale said.

"Hope so," Bev agreed.

"Yeah," I said, "except we have used the word 'incursion' a fair bit. I think we should know why these things are coming through at all."

"And devise a plan for how to deal with it," said Nightingale. "I do wonder...we have been looking for reasons that magic should be getting stronger, but what if the cause lies on the other side of the veil?"

"Dimension," I said before I could stop myself. Naturally, Bev and Nightingale simply ignored me.

"Or what if they're being pulled through by something on this side, rather than pushed by something on that one?" said Bev.

"Where would we even begin?" I asked, imagining the list of actions we were about to generate. This was going to require a new operation and a whole new level of community outreach and partner engagement.

"With everyone, I think." Nightingale drummed his fingers on the armchair slowly. "We need to involve everyone."


End file.
